On the short list

My friend's dad, a man with a background of epic pursuits, likens it to a dimmer switch. You don't just stop all at once, he says. Instead, it gets a little less bright as you get older. The crux move, as with all crux moves, involves adapting to what is left. What you can still do.

This feels impossible.

This is a man who completed a strenuous eighteen mile wilderness hike over a high pass on his eightieth birthday, so there is that.

Years ago, in the Florida swamp, I hobbled around with an overuse injury. Mike, one of the other fire crewmembers, threw up his hands. “You need more indoor hobbies!” He proclaimed.

I mean, he's not wrong.

But for now, there's no dimmer switch. Not yet. Not ever? I can hope. So I climb. I head up the rock-studded trail toward a summer lake that I should not be able to reach for another month. The spring rains haven't come and it was ninety degrees one day last week. Indoor hobbies can wait, too.

There's snow, but not much of it. Not enough of it. I crunch through it, not needing boots or spikes. This is the earliest I have ever been here, and I had expected to have to turn around well before now.

But there it is, the lake still frozen, the campsites all covered in a thick white blanket. It feels almost wrong to be here: I am an intruder in the lake's winter world. I don't stay long though. There's the risk of postholing as the snow softens, and it's cold and windswept.

About a mile down trail, I run into another human. He and I often run into each other on the early trails. We are the scouts, not content to wait. He says he was trying to figure out whose footprints he was following, this place and this time of year. Few are out here.

“There’s a short list!” He says and I feel ridiculously pleased by this. I'm on the short list!

Being on the short list isn't about bragging or feeling superior. It's about keeping the light turned up high. The dimmer switch may come my way, but not today. I love this early season adventuring, as the lakes wake up and the high country unfurls into summer. By September, this trail will puff with dust under my feet and the lake will look tired of all the humanity. Now, it feels fresh and new.

I'm almost to the trailhead when I encounter a quartet of boys headed up with backpacks. Stuff hangs off their packs in every dieection. One is holding a blue foam pad in his arms. Part of me wants to be the trail guide and warn them what's ahead. But they don't ask and I don't say. Let them discover it all. Let their dimmer switch be far, far in the future.